At what point do your leader’s denials and delusions become a problem for you?
Monday, May 1 2017

Twitter: @rodgermitchell; Search #monetarysovereignty
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…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressedand the treachery of their leaders..
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Let’s say your mayor tells you crime in your city is at an all-time low, so he now can reduce the size and budget of the police department. But statistics show that crime is at an all-time high.

Would you be intelligent enough to see his ignorance of fact as a problem for you and your family?

Let’s say your state governor tells you your water supply is clean and pure, so “job-killing” water regulations no longer are needed. But statistics show your water has dangerous levels of lead.

Would you be intelligent enough to consider your governor’s denial of clear evidence as worrisome?

Let’s say your Senators and their political party tell you your banks are completely honest, so there is no need for “economically stifling” oversight. But, you keep reading articles about how your banks not only caused the last recession but are continuing to commit the same offenses.

Would you be intelligent enough to recognize your Senators’ and their political party’s divorce from reality as harmful to you and the nation?

Let’s say your Congressperson first tells you he agrees with the scientists that your food supply is in danger from harmful bacteria and dangerous chemicals, so monitoring is needed. Then he denies he said that, and tells you the scientists are lying. Later, he tells you the food supply is not in danger, then it is in danger, and now it is not in danger, so costly monitoring is not needed.

You repeatedly see stories of botulism and chemically tainted food on our shelves and the vast majority of scientists say food monitoring is necessary, but your Congressperson tells you he was just kidding and he was just joking.

Would you be intelligent enough to doubt what your Congressperson repeatedly tells you, then denies he has told you? Would any of the above bother you? Affect you? Affect your children? Would you care at all?

Yesterday, for example, the president appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and host John Dickerson did his best to ask Trump to explain the plan the White House is championing, with a particular emphasis on one of its most controversial provisions. The president argued:

“Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I just watched another network than yours, and they were saying, ‘Pre-existing is not covered.’ Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I mandate it. I said, ‘Has to be.’”

When Dickerson pressed Trump on whether he’s prepared to “guarantee” protections to those with pre-existing conditions, the president replied,

“We actually have – we actually have a clause that guarantees.”

There is no such clause. The Republican bill guts benefits for consumers with pre-existing conditions, clearing the way for states to do the exact opposite of what Trump said yesterday.

Trump, making up nonsense as he went along, went on to say in the same interview that the GOP bill has been “totally fixed,” adding,

A longtime healthcare lobbyist, who also did not want to be identified criticizing Republicans, said he’d never seen legislation developed with such disregard for expert input. “It is totally divorced from reality,” he said.

Do you understand that your leader’s ignorance of fact is a problem for you and your family?

But wait, Trump says. There’s a perfectly good reason that (he) didn’t label China a currency manipulator because (he) changed China’s approach to monetary policy. Consider this exchange on “Face the Nation” yesterday between the president and CBS’s John Dickerson.

TRUMP: …I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they – as soon as I got elected, they stopped. They’re not – it’s not going down anymore, their currency.

DICKERSON: But that had been true before. That had been true–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No.

When the CBS host asked specifically, “You were the one who got China to stop manipulating their currency?” Trump replied,

“I think so.”

Last week, Trump made a similar comment, arguing,

“President Xi, from the time I took office, he has not, they have not been currency manipulators. Because there’s a certain respect because he knew I would do something or whatever.”

The facts are not in dispute: China’s currency manipulation stopped in 2014. The evidence is unambiguous and unchallenged.

Two possibilities: The first is Trump knows China didn’t change its policies because of him, but he’s so embarrassed by his handling of the issue– and the ease with which he abandoned a promise he made to voters – that he’s brazenly lying, hoping his demonstrably false claims will distract some people from the truth.

The second is that Trump is so delusional, he actually believes his presidency shaped events in China three years ago.

Russia and its autocratic leader were quite unpopular in GOP circles for many years.

In 2014, a CNN poll found that only 16% of Republican voters saw Russia as an ally. The same poll last week found that 56% of Republican voters now see Putin’s government as friendly.

The poll asked Americans about the possibility that Trump’s team colluded with Russia while Moscow launched an illegal espionage operation to attack our democracy.

The results found that one-in-five Republicans wouldn’t care if such collusion took place, while 44% of GOP voters would see this as a “minor problem.”

In a Fox News interview that aired on Friday, Trump started complaining about “made-up stories like Russia.”

“I call it the fake Russia story. Russia story was made up because the – they were embarrassed by their loss. They had this tremendous loss, a loss like nobody has ever seen before.

“So they made up this Russia thing to try and deflect because they’re embarrassed by what happened. The Russia is a phony – what do you see is the Russia story?

“The Russia story. And you see all of these other phony stories. It’s so bad and for me to have great approval ratings in light of all the faux press and the fake press I think is amazing.”

Trump does not actually have “great approval ratings,” and his claims about the nature of the election results are completely detached from reality.

The Russia scandal broke during the 2016 campaign, and the FBI began its counter-espionage investigation in July 2016. In Trump’s mind, the entire controversy was a reaction to his unexpected election victory in November 2016, which only makes sense if everyone involved in this story collectively had access to a time machine.

Do you recognize the GOP divorce from reality as harmful to you and America?

Donald Trump called global warming an urgent problem, and he’s called it a hoax. He’s claimed it’s a scam invented by the Chinese, and he’s denied that he ever said that. He’s promised to “cancel” the historic Paris climate agreement, and he’s said he still has an “open mind” on the matter.

2/6/09: Trump and three of his children signed a 2009 letter to President Barack Obama calling for a global climate deal.“We support your effort to ensure meaningful and effective measures to control climate change, an immediate challenge facing the United States and the world today. If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet.”

2/14/10: Trump changes his mind: “(Al) Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming when China and other countries couldn’t care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan, and India are laughing at America’s stupidity.”

2/16/10: Trump claims scientists admitted global warming is a “con.” Climate deniers wrongly claimed hacked emails showed that scientists had conspired to fabricate evidence of global warming. Trump said (inaccurately) on Fox News that there was an email “sent a couple months ago by one of the leaders of global warming, the initiative…almost saying—I guess they’re saying it’s a con.”

11/6/12: Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

2014: Trump donates money to fight climate change. Trump donated $5,000 of his foundation’s money to Protect Our Winters, an advocacy group dedicated to “mobilizing the outdoor sports community to lead the charge towards positive climate action.” As the group’s website explains, “If we’re serious about slowing climate change, it’s imperative that we decrease our dependence on fossil fuels and focus on cleaner sources of energy and electricity.”

12/30/15: “So Obama’s talking about all of this with the global warming and the—a lot of it’s a hoax, it’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a money-making industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.”

1/24/16:Trump says his claim that global warming is a Chinese hoax was a “joke.”

May 2016: Trump wants to build a sea wall to protect his resort from global warming.“If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct…it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates…In our view, it could reasonably be expected that the rate of sea level rise might become twice of that presently occurring.”

5/26/16: Trump pledges to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement. Trump said that during his first 100 days in office, he would “rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including” his landmark climate regulations, “cancel the Paris Climate Agreement,” and “stop all payments of US tax dollars to UN global warming programs.”

7/26/16: Trump says he “probably” called climate change a “hoax.” Bill O’Reilly asked Trump whether it was “true” that he had “called climate change a hoax.” Trump replied that he “might have” done so.

9/26/16: Trump picks leading climate skeptic to run the EPA transition. He chose Myron Ebell, who has a long history of opposing efforts to fight climate change; he’s even accused climate scientists of “manipulating and falsifying the data.”

9/26/16: Trump denies saying climate change is a Chinese hoax.

11/23/16: Trump has “open mind” on Paris agreement but still thinks scientists are misleading us.

11/27/16: Trump’s “default position” is that climate change “is a bunch of bunk.”

12/1/16: Ivanka Trump “wants to make climate change…one of her signature issues.”

1/20/17: White House climate website replaced with pledge to eliminate Obama’s climate regulations.“President Trump is committed to eliminating harmful and unnecessary policies such as the Climate Action Plan.”

3/16/17: Trump plans to cut to climate research because it’s “a waste of your money.”

3/28/17: Trump signs executive order gutting many of Obama’s climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan.

•Progressives think the purpose of government is to protect the poor and powerless from the rich and powerful. Conservatives think the purpose of government is to protect the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

4 Responses to At what point do your leader’s denials and delusions become a problem for you?

Historians yesterday valiantly tried, and mostly failed, to understand and interpret President Trump’s remarks about President Andrew Jackson.

Among other comments, Trump seemed to assert that Jackson, who died in 1845, could have prevented the Civil War, which began in 1861, and that the causes of the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history have not been addressed or discussed.

I get it. But when I saw..” inflation that cannot be cured with interest rate control….” I remembered inflation (not hyper inflation) could be controlled by monetary or fiscal policy, the former being the quickest and most effective. And as you’ve pointed out repeatedly, we’ve had no destabilizing hyperinflation… as have a few other nations in the last century.